NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 10 Classical Temple Architecture — LET’S EXPLORE
Book page 103 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
India’s classical temples come in distinct regional styles. For instance, note the pyramidal shape of Bṛihadīśhvara Temple’s vimāna and compare with the shapes in Fig. 3.19. Revisit the pictures of the Angkor Wat and Kandāriyā Mahādeva Temples and note the chief differences you can observe.
Answer
The chief difference is in the outline of the tower — whether it climbs in straight steps or in a curve — and then in how many towers there are and how the whole complex is laid out around them.
Temple
Shape of the tower
Other differences to notice
Bṛihadīśhvara, Thanjavur (Fig. 3.20)
A straight-sided pyramid, built of clearly separated storeys that shrink as they rise, each edged with a row of miniature shrines. Crowned by a single heavy cupola.
A south Indian vimāna, over 60 m high, in granite. The entrance is a gopuram; a huge Nandi carved from one stone faces the shrine from its own pavilion.
The two towers in Fig. 3.19 (Nagara and Kalinga)
A smooth inward curve: the sides rise vertically, then bend in towards the top. Capped by a ribbed disc and a pot-shaped finial.
This is the north Indian and Odishan śhikhara — the shape you see on the Lingarāja Temple (Figs. 3.22–3.23).
Kandāriyā Mahādeva, Khajuraho
The same curve, but clustered: the tall central śhikhara is surrounded by many smaller replicas of itself, stepping up like a range of peaks.
The whole temple stands on a single high plinth, is compact rather than sprawling, and its outer walls carry continuous bands of sculpture. There is no enclosing gopuram wall.
Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Five towers arranged four-at-the-corners-with-one-in-the-middle, on stepped terraces.
Enormous horizontal spread: long galleries, causeways, a huge rectangular moat. Here the tower is one element inside a vast planned landscape, not the whole point of the design.
Three tower outlines from the chapter, drawn to the same height so the shapes can be compared. The Bengal roof of Fig. 3.26 is included because it is the third distinct answer to the same question.
Why the shapes differ — and it is not only taste. The material and the method push each region towards its own outline.
Thanjavur’s granite is extremely hard and heavy. It is easiest to lay in level courses and step each course slightly inward — which produces, naturally, a pyramid of storeys. Corbelling upward in straight steps is also the safest way to close a tall hollow tower without a true arch.
Northern and Odishan sandstone is softer and can be dressed to a curved profile, so masons could make each course a slightly different shape and build the smooth inward bend of a rekha śhikhara.
Bengal has no building stone at all, only clay. Its temples are therefore of brick, and their roofs copy the curved bamboo-and-thatch roof of the region’s village huts — a shape you can build in small bricks but could never cut in granite.
In every case the question is the same — how do you get height and shelter out of the material you have? — and each region answered it with what lay under its own feet.